Rot When night’s hot breath touches the grapesripening in the field, grey spores attack,and a fungus spreads.Botrytis, a “noble rot,” shrivels fruit on the vine.Some grapes need to be diseased.Harvested late, they possess a concentrated sweetness, the flavor of orange blossoms, ambrosia and honeydew. I enjoy this Riesling chilled,with spicy Thai food or fresh strawberries.A toast! To wine! To rot!Near Año Nuevo After a storm, low clouds, shards of grey slate crowd the sky. A woman rises from the water and enters air that stings like the first sip of Champagne. She follows footholds carved into shale cliffs and reaches an open fieldwhere men uproot a field of dead-nettle to plant grapes, a civilizing vine. Salt sings on the air, then settleson trees and open fields, strawberries, and artichokes, those overgrown thistles with tender hearts. Bees dip their tongues into wildflowers, their wings spreading spores of yeast that settle over rows of ribboned vines.The grapes mature. Men gather clusters of Chardonnay,thick bunches that hangclose to the dry earth. The few grapes left unpicked ferment on the vines.The woman closes her eyes,places a single piece of fruitin her mouth—acidic, sweet, sharp on the tongue.

Jake Young lives in Santa Cruz, California, and works at Beauregard Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He Received his MFA at North Carolina State University. His most recent work appears or is forthcoming in Red Wheelbarrow, Miramar, Solo Novo, PANK, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, phren-Z, and Gastronomica: Journal of Food and Culture. He was recently invited to the 2014 Djerassi Resident Artists Program.

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